Wednesday, July 1, 2009
No time
I have not been training any these past several days. I have been in the process of moving (that kind of coutns as training, right?). I am now almost all settled in and ready to find some new trails for my mountain biking (and for running) and map out some good road rides.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
12 Hours of Rim Nordic
I think I learned a lot that day. Well, kind of. I learned what I need to learn. Racing at altitude is hard. I need to look at the hurkey creek course.......(looking)........OK! It starts out at about 4550ft and peaks a little over 5100ft. That is not too bad compared to Rim Nordic which started like at 6500ft and peaked out above 7100ft. As the day went by, my breathing got hard. I could not take deeper breathes without my lungs burning. I am not too sure why that happened, but it happened. I will be moving to Moreno Valley soon and the drive to Hurkey creek will be like 30-45 minutes so I might go up there occasionally and just ride laps around the course.
I also learned that I need to work on my nutrition still. I did good getting enough calories, but i had a lot of stomach distress. I think it was from an overload of electrolytes this time. Every lap a drank a bottle with some nuun in it. The first 3 laps I had a bag of clif blocks per lap in addition to the nuun. Also, I would have a bottle of Endurox after each lap for the first two laps. After the 3rd lap I felt stomach distress and thought it was because I had not had an solid food and my stomach was telling me to EAT. So, I had an orange and an apple and mad the mistake of having a cookie. I thought that because I love cookies it would make me feel better, but it didn't. So then 4th and 5th laps I also took a bottle of the clif shot electrolye drink and that helped get me through the last 2 laps of mine. The 5th lap was hard though, because I could not seem to drink anything and became dehydrated. I think that was because I had no just plain water all day.
I know you are not supposed to try anything new on race day and that is exactly what I did. I never have longer training days where I can try anything like that though. I think I am going to try to get a close knit group of hard core racers that I can train with and ride with because I don't have any friends who do that and that is what I am missing. I am moving soon and once I do I will try and find people who race to train with. I am also getting the Garmind Edge 305 soon. That will help to get me out there and motivated more because I can "race" against my last time on the routes. It will be like a real life video game.
There is still a long time until Hurkey Creek and Rim Nordic was a good gauge for me. I need to ride a lot more. Work on my race nutrition and every day nutrition. I also need to work on pacing myself. At Rim Nordic, I put together 3 lap times faster than any of the pre-rides I had done. I should have slowed the pace on those and maybe my last 2 wouldn't have been so slow. All in all, Rim Nordic was fun. We basically started out in 4th place for the day and stayed in 4th place and ended in 4th place. I am not sure who first place was, but I am pretty sure they were a pro sponsored team. 2nd place was team BearClaw and 3rd place was Jensons team. If Nick (my team mate) would have had laps times closer to mine, we would have finished maybe 10 minutes quiker and possibly gotten in 12 laps, but that would have still left us in 4th. We both need to get quicker for race #3 if we want to make it into the podium. If we had a bike shop backing us up, I think we would be able to be a little faster. We would have the added pressure to get faster and we would get better prices to get better equipment and keep our bikes in tip top shape. Oh yeah, there were 18 teams in our category. So, not so bad to get 4th there.
I also learned that I need to work on my nutrition still. I did good getting enough calories, but i had a lot of stomach distress. I think it was from an overload of electrolytes this time. Every lap a drank a bottle with some nuun in it. The first 3 laps I had a bag of clif blocks per lap in addition to the nuun. Also, I would have a bottle of Endurox after each lap for the first two laps. After the 3rd lap I felt stomach distress and thought it was because I had not had an solid food and my stomach was telling me to EAT. So, I had an orange and an apple and mad the mistake of having a cookie. I thought that because I love cookies it would make me feel better, but it didn't. So then 4th and 5th laps I also took a bottle of the clif shot electrolye drink and that helped get me through the last 2 laps of mine. The 5th lap was hard though, because I could not seem to drink anything and became dehydrated. I think that was because I had no just plain water all day.
I know you are not supposed to try anything new on race day and that is exactly what I did. I never have longer training days where I can try anything like that though. I think I am going to try to get a close knit group of hard core racers that I can train with and ride with because I don't have any friends who do that and that is what I am missing. I am moving soon and once I do I will try and find people who race to train with. I am also getting the Garmind Edge 305 soon. That will help to get me out there and motivated more because I can "race" against my last time on the routes. It will be like a real life video game.
There is still a long time until Hurkey Creek and Rim Nordic was a good gauge for me. I need to ride a lot more. Work on my race nutrition and every day nutrition. I also need to work on pacing myself. At Rim Nordic, I put together 3 lap times faster than any of the pre-rides I had done. I should have slowed the pace on those and maybe my last 2 wouldn't have been so slow. All in all, Rim Nordic was fun. We basically started out in 4th place for the day and stayed in 4th place and ended in 4th place. I am not sure who first place was, but I am pretty sure they were a pro sponsored team. 2nd place was team BearClaw and 3rd place was Jensons team. If Nick (my team mate) would have had laps times closer to mine, we would have finished maybe 10 minutes quiker and possibly gotten in 12 laps, but that would have still left us in 4th. We both need to get quicker for race #3 if we want to make it into the podium. If we had a bike shop backing us up, I think we would be able to be a little faster. We would have the added pressure to get faster and we would get better prices to get better equipment and keep our bikes in tip top shape. Oh yeah, there were 18 teams in our category. So, not so bad to get 4th there.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Breathing and Misc Thoughts
So I have had asthma ever since I can remember. It used to be worse as a kid, but now it only bothers me during exercise. I know, great. I spend all this time training and mostly not at full lung capacity. I had never thought of that before though. I never really realized how shallow my breathing got during physical activity until this past weekend.
I went up with my friend to pre-ride the 12 Hours of Rim Nordic course and we rode 3 laps, which is about half of what I think I will do on race day. Well, the first two laps went well, right around an hour at a very moderate pace. My HR remained nice and low, no lactic acid buildup or anything. Well, lap 3, I did not do so well. On the fireroad climb after the single track, I noticed my HR was super high for what felt like a low effort. I decided to try and just slow my breathing and concentrate more on my breathing to see what happened. To my surprise, my HR started to drop. I picked up the intensity some and maintained nice deep breathes and my HR was still dropping.
I think the reason for my shallow breathes stems from the fact that when I inhale deeply, I feel a sort of burning sensation in my lungs. This happens at any altitude level so I attribute it to my asthma or to my plethora of lung diseases from when I was a child. Either way, I finally realized that I am cutting myself short on oxygen. I think that if I actively work and concetrate on deep breathes, I can familiarize my lungs with the sensation and it will increase my athletic ability immensly. It is what I am really going to work on for the 24 Hours of Hurkey Creek race.
Besides that, my running took a dive and I missed a whole week of running. I was getting over my sickness and dealing with wedding stuff, but that is no excuse. Tonight I am going to head out for a 5-6 maybe more mile run. I need to really increase my mileage on my runs. I have hit a plataeu and have not been increasing my speed or endurance so I need to shock my body and add varying workouts. I also haven't been swimming for about 3 weeks and I think its time to start jumping into the pool again. Too much to do and not enough time. I have, however, added weight training to my weeks and I am hoping to see some improvements in all other aspects of my training. Only time will tell.
I went up with my friend to pre-ride the 12 Hours of Rim Nordic course and we rode 3 laps, which is about half of what I think I will do on race day. Well, the first two laps went well, right around an hour at a very moderate pace. My HR remained nice and low, no lactic acid buildup or anything. Well, lap 3, I did not do so well. On the fireroad climb after the single track, I noticed my HR was super high for what felt like a low effort. I decided to try and just slow my breathing and concentrate more on my breathing to see what happened. To my surprise, my HR started to drop. I picked up the intensity some and maintained nice deep breathes and my HR was still dropping.
I think the reason for my shallow breathes stems from the fact that when I inhale deeply, I feel a sort of burning sensation in my lungs. This happens at any altitude level so I attribute it to my asthma or to my plethora of lung diseases from when I was a child. Either way, I finally realized that I am cutting myself short on oxygen. I think that if I actively work and concetrate on deep breathes, I can familiarize my lungs with the sensation and it will increase my athletic ability immensly. It is what I am really going to work on for the 24 Hours of Hurkey Creek race.
Besides that, my running took a dive and I missed a whole week of running. I was getting over my sickness and dealing with wedding stuff, but that is no excuse. Tonight I am going to head out for a 5-6 maybe more mile run. I need to really increase my mileage on my runs. I have hit a plataeu and have not been increasing my speed or endurance so I need to shock my body and add varying workouts. I also haven't been swimming for about 3 weeks and I think its time to start jumping into the pool again. Too much to do and not enough time. I have, however, added weight training to my weeks and I am hoping to see some improvements in all other aspects of my training. Only time will tell.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Get out!
Sometimes I can think of every excuse imaginable to get myself to not go out to train. I even tell myself that I need more rest or that I will make it up on the weekend, which to this day has never before happened. I tried doing this today. Luckily, the biggest loser was on and they said something about how they should put this picture of the other team on top of the TV so that if they wanted to sit down to watch TV, they would see that picture and not watch TV, but go workout. Well, after they said that I went out and rode. Once I got out to ride it was great. Even though it was really windy, it was a nice cool wind. I did get mildly hot on the climbs and I tried to keep a moderate pace. I think I need to play single speed for a couple rides to help build some leg strength. My legs burn up too quick if I try and push really hard. My ride was good though, got in almost 2 hours. I think total time was 1:48. It was a nice ride. 2k ft of climbing and 20 miles so about 1k every 10 miles. Almost on par with most 12/24 hour race courses. Rim Nordic has about 1250ft of climbing every 9 miles, but its at altitude so it seems worse than it really is. I have to head up to school one last time this weekend so I might try and get in a super long road ride. If my buddy complains too much we might just do an extended dirt ride. Maybe ride san sevaine then cross over to the sand climb of deeath and venture into the cajone pass.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Sick
So I am just now starting to get over my cold. I don't get not sick fast. I still managed to keep my running volume up, however, but I did not get any swimming in all this past week and I can tell that is going to hurt me. I also kept a decent amount of riding, well on par with what I have been doing, sort of. I got out to ride on wednesday after work and rode some on saturday.
On saturday I went up to the 12 hours of Rim Nordic course to test ride the course and see how I would feel riding up at an altitude of 7000 feet. I felt great. The only thing that bothered me was that the air was really dry and within like 5 minutes, my throat was dried out and swollen. My partner for the race was struggling big time. I think it was a combination of him not being in very good aerobic shape due to a lack of riding. He blamed it on not recovering, but he had almost 48 hours to recover and that is plenty. He always complains about never getting medals anymore for winning races, but he doesn't have the desire to train and get faster to start winning. I need a new team mate for racing.
On saturday I went up to the 12 hours of Rim Nordic course to test ride the course and see how I would feel riding up at an altitude of 7000 feet. I felt great. The only thing that bothered me was that the air was really dry and within like 5 minutes, my throat was dried out and swollen. My partner for the race was struggling big time. I think it was a combination of him not being in very good aerobic shape due to a lack of riding. He blamed it on not recovering, but he had almost 48 hours to recover and that is plenty. He always complains about never getting medals anymore for winning races, but he doesn't have the desire to train and get faster to start winning. I need a new team mate for racing.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
San Dimas tri and Updates
I have been pretty busy lately. Did the San Dimas Triathlon on May 17th and placed 5th/6th in my age group. 5th if you don't count top 3 overall in the age group standings, 6th if you do. Anyway, it was a good race. I took it fairly easy the first half of the swim and once we got to the furthest buoy I picked it up. Ended up with a nice swim time for me. Took it fairly easy on the bike. Though I forgot my food on the first half of the first lap, but then realized I stuffed my clif blocks in my shorts. Ended up averaging a little 0ver 20mph. Saved all my energy for the run because it is where I always struggle. Well, all my running has been paying off. Ended up doing the run in a little less than 45 minutes, they said it was a 5 mile run, but I had 5.6 on my watch, which put me at a little over 8 min/mile. I chose to not wear socks and ended up with some nasty blisters. I think I will always wear socks until I get to a point where I am actually like 30-60 seconds within podium spots because thats when putting on socks makes a difference. For now, I am better off taking the time to put socks on to save my feet so that I can spend more time doing quality training without blistery feet.
Besides that, I have still been running. I did miss some miles this past week due to the blisters early in the week and getting sick later in the week. I am still sick now, but am feeling way better than yesterday so I am gonna try and go ride this afternoon. 12 hours of Rim Nordic is coming up fast. Less than 3 weeks to go.
I have also been looking at houses and my fiance and I made like 4 offers this past weekend. One we don't even have a chance with but we did it anyways. 2 of the other 3 I think we have a good chance at getting. The 4th one was the best house ever in our price range, but the status on the realtor matrix thing said pending, but our realtor thought that was a lie so she took us to it anyways and we wrote up an offer and signed it. She thinks it is incorrect because it was only listed 4 days ago and was already pending, but because it is a foreclosure, it usually takes atleast a week to get an offer accepted. The address listed on the realtor matrix (or the map) was showing the wrong location also. This might be because whoever listed it was doing some dirty tricks so nobody could get the house maybe. Anyways, the 2 the we have a good chance at getting and the one that I hope we get are all in great locations (even though its Moreno Valley). They are right at the foot of some decent mountains and have trails for running and everything. Only time will tell though, if we get any of those.
Besides that, I have still been running. I did miss some miles this past week due to the blisters early in the week and getting sick later in the week. I am still sick now, but am feeling way better than yesterday so I am gonna try and go ride this afternoon. 12 hours of Rim Nordic is coming up fast. Less than 3 weeks to go.
I have also been looking at houses and my fiance and I made like 4 offers this past weekend. One we don't even have a chance with but we did it anyways. 2 of the other 3 I think we have a good chance at getting. The 4th one was the best house ever in our price range, but the status on the realtor matrix thing said pending, but our realtor thought that was a lie so she took us to it anyways and we wrote up an offer and signed it. She thinks it is incorrect because it was only listed 4 days ago and was already pending, but because it is a foreclosure, it usually takes atleast a week to get an offer accepted. The address listed on the realtor matrix (or the map) was showing the wrong location also. This might be because whoever listed it was doing some dirty tricks so nobody could get the house maybe. Anyways, the 2 the we have a good chance at getting and the one that I hope we get are all in great locations (even though its Moreno Valley). They are right at the foot of some decent mountains and have trails for running and everything. Only time will tell though, if we get any of those.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Tired
So I think my poor diet is really starting to affect me now that my training volume is getting a lot higher. Today I went out for a run in the morning and felt tired before the run. During the run, I felt very tired! My HR was high, my pace was down. My legs felt heavy. It was a bad run. I have the polar RS800sd and it tracks cadence and stride length when you run and some how computes what polar calls a running index. I don't know exactly what they factor in to calculate the running index, but when I chart the running index vs. the date it seems to be going in a decreasing trend. This is somewhat due to the fact that the first week and a half I had the watch, I had not calibrated it properly. So, when I would run like 3.25 miles it would tell me I ran like 4 miles. It was way off. So i think I need to wait a few more weeks to see what the trend is like and I can, for now, use the running index as a gauge to measure improvements. I need to do some research on that running index and find out what factors into it. I think Polar also has a few other measurements that they take and calculate that I need to learn about so that I can track improvements and when I try different workouts, see how that effects my body and everything and then I can learn what works for me.
Besides that, I went for a swim Friday evening and got in only a mile, but in 28:45. That is about 1:38/100 yards. That is the fastest I have done a mile and I did not feel like I was exerting myself too hard. I think spending lots of time in the pool is helping me out. I just need to work more on doing lots of faster sets. like warm up then go like 10 x 100, 20 x 50, 10 x 100. I am still kind of low on my swimming volume though and am still working on building it up.
I also got my mountain bike back from Jim. Thank you Jim for letting me store it there for a while. I went out riding on Thursday and I am trying to muster up the will power to get out and ride right now. Don't have anyone to ride with so my motivation is low and I had a bad run so my motivation is lower, plus I am racing tomorrow so I don't want to do too much if I am not really too recovered right now. I have to leave around noon or so and head up to my grandfathers house. My mom is graduating from community college today so I have that later.
Besides that, I went for a swim Friday evening and got in only a mile, but in 28:45. That is about 1:38/100 yards. That is the fastest I have done a mile and I did not feel like I was exerting myself too hard. I think spending lots of time in the pool is helping me out. I just need to work more on doing lots of faster sets. like warm up then go like 10 x 100, 20 x 50, 10 x 100. I am still kind of low on my swimming volume though and am still working on building it up.
I also got my mountain bike back from Jim. Thank you Jim for letting me store it there for a while. I went out riding on Thursday and I am trying to muster up the will power to get out and ride right now. Don't have anyone to ride with so my motivation is low and I had a bad run so my motivation is lower, plus I am racing tomorrow so I don't want to do too much if I am not really too recovered right now. I have to leave around noon or so and head up to my grandfathers house. My mom is graduating from community college today so I have that later.
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